UPDATE 10: Huge secrecy! Emergency workers effectively blocked from participating in rescue work. Media too fenced off from scene. The dead and wounded were evacuated to the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital through the back gate of the university while emergency workers were waiting to be admitted to the scene to participate in rescue work.

The emergency ward of the Aminu Kano hospital has been closed to the public. Hospital authorities refused to allow rescue workers in. The emergency workers and volunteers have dispersed in frustration.

“This is a record,’ an emergency official told PREMIUM TIMES. “I have never seen a place anywhere in the world where accredited rescue workers are blocked from scenes of disasters.”

UPDATE 9: Bayero University spokesperson, Mustapha Zaharadeen, says he’s only able to confirm 7 dead (including a professor) and several injured. He says the university is now calm.

UPDATE 8: Death toll in Kano university bombings hits 15, a reliable source just told us. He said the figure would most likely rise, as a lot of the wounded are in critical condition

UPDATE 7: Engr Abubakar of the Kano State Emergency Management Agency told just PREMIUM TIMES that rescue workers are still unable to access the scene of the incident. “The scene has been cordoned off by security agencies and we have been shut out. We are about two kilometres to the scene. Everybody is here, including the Red Cross and other agencies. We have important work to do at the scene, but we are here. We don’t know what to do.”

UPDATE 6: The National Emergency Management Agency says it has mobilised response agencies and volunteers to the bomb scene for rescue operation since it has no office in Kano.

NEMA’s spokesperson, Yushau Shuaibu, said in a statement, “About an hour ago, NEMA attention was drawn to explosions and gunshots at old site BUK campus in Kano.

“Since NEMA has no office in the state we have mobilised response agencies and volunteers to the scene.”

UPDATE 2: A Kano resident sent us this: “I wasn’t there but I know of the first place they went to in BUK! There is a Federal Government-assisted IT infrastructure site inside BUK old site that they first went to. They told the legionnaires guarding that they were there to bomb the building because it belonged to the Federal Government.”

“After much begging and quoting of the Quran by the aged legionnaires, Boko Haram left and about 20 minutes later, they started bombing the chaplain and shootings broke out.

“Meanwhile, the area has been cordoned off by late arriving security.”

UPDATE 1: The explosion started around 8 a.m. They attacked theatres 2 & 3, where the christians normally have their services.

Witnesses say the they gun shots lasted for more than 30 minutes. They said two bombs went off around the two theatres which are situated in between the faculties of medicine and science in the Bayero University.

The Joint Task Force, which is overseeing security in the city didn’t arrive until 20 minutes after the gunmen had left. A witness said the attackers were seven in number.

The place is now calm, he said.

We spoke to one witness, who said he was conducting service in one of the theatres when the blasts went off.

He said it occurred 30 metres away from where he stood, adding that what scarred him most was the gunshots that followed the bombing.

He admitted casualties but is still in state of shock and could not tell how many.